


Like Ash On The Tongue (And Fire In The Heart)

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: An Exploration of Grief, Angst, But Also Celebration of a Life, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Warning for Kylo's Unhealthy Way of Dealing With His Emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:18:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9083998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: An exploration of grief after the death of Leia Organa.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck this. Have my grief.

When Alderaan was lost, the galaxy shivered, and the throats of the Force Sensitive closed with grief and unanticipated silence. A child standing in the middle of a field full of corn went still; the ball she and her brother had been throwing hit her square in the face, but this was not the reason she cried. A gungan in her rocking chair, her scales going grey and her fins chapping, closed her eyes and whispered a prayer under her breath. A young man looked up from his work at an Imperial desk, tried to speak, and failed; his superiors dismissed him for the day and watched him walk, back stiff, face pale, down the halls of the Emperor’s finest star destroyer.

When Princess Leia of Alderaan, Senator, General, and last heir to a dead planet, is lost, the shivers of the Force are much quieter. The grief is not.

*

The muscles in Rey’s back go stiff at once; she drops her staff where she’s been practicing forms and fixes her gaze out on Ahch-To’s churning sea. It feels like a fist has clenched around her neck, like rocks have taken the place of her lungs, and she can’t breathe, can hardly bear to think. She sinks to the ground, eyes closed, and digs her hand into the damp dirt. Even the timing of her breath with the waves doesn’t calm the pounding of her heart, nor does it dry the wetness of her eyes.

*

Lando, old, wrinkled, and as Force sensitive as a rock, drops his mug of caf, halfway across the galaxy. His aids – old, like him; worn, like him; scarred, like him – turn their heads and are surprised to see the old smuggler clutching as his heart. They rush to him, but he waves them aside; this has nothing, he claims, to do with his own weighing age.

*

Finn is on the base at Endor, deep in conversation with one of the Intelligence officers he’s managed to befriend. He stops in the middle of a hallway, blinded by pain. His companion stumbles on a few feet ahead of him, then looks back at him, her head tilted with confusion. It takes several moments of her waving her hand in front of his face for Finn to be able to see again; it takes longer for him to be able to speak. There is an emptiness in the deep crevices of his heart as he hears the whispers of a voice he barely recognizes breathe, then go quiet.

*

Kylo Ren screams.

The scar on his face still burns, but the pain is not enough. The tree village of the Rishii falls; he leaves none alive, though they repeat his screams back to him to the last. When the air reeks of burned feathers, but the world has gone quiet, Kylo turns his blade on himself. The fractured kyber burns through his gloves, down to the palms of his hands; he drops the weapon into the grass with a violent swear and watches as his blood joins the red glow, the little fires that spark up all around his feet.

His Stormtrooper guard doesn’t dare approach him. Any medical droid that gets sent his way is destroyed without a flinch; any approaching officer feels the Force gather around their throat and retreats, running fast and far with General Hux’s name on their lips.

The noises Kylo makes are barely human. He smears his own blood across his mask and screams for his mother, but the words are so indistinguishable from an animal’s cries of pain that no one can make out what he’s saying.

*

Poe Dameron, deaf to the Force, is informed by the whispers in the Rebellion mess. His tray clatters to the tile; when he looks around, he finds half the Rebellion in tears, the other half with their backs turned away.

(He retreats, after hours upon hours of offering comfort, to his bunk and pulls a leather bound journal out of the pack he has stowed away under his bed. The pages are yellowing, but his mother’s familiar handwriting details the day she first met the infamous General of the Rebellion, from the sweat that poured down her too-young back to the tight curls of Leia’s already greying hair.)

*

Luke goes still.

The cup of tea in his hands does not drop to the floor. The Force does not form a noose around his neck; it flows on around him, through the blades of grass and particles of dirt beneath his feet. He breathes in deep, through his nose, and tastes salt in the back of his mouth.

A voice in his head whispers to him, young and familiar. For a moment, his chest grows tight.

“I was born before you, you know,” his sister informs him. Her face is free of the stress lines and scars that her long wars had given her. Her hair is brown again and loose around her shoulders; if Luke concentrates hard enough, he can see her surrounded by Ewoks, laughing deep into the night. “It only makes sense that I go first.”

“Please,” Luke scoffs, and for a moment, his voice is that of the farm boy brought to life so many years ago. “You were always the ambition one. You always wanted to make it to the finish line before anyone else.”

Leia scoffs at him, but the curve of her mouth is fond. Her Force ghost doesn’t reach out to him, doesn’t offer the physical comforts that most mourners require. Luke, in turn, doesn’t ask for them. He watches, instead, as the silver-blue of her shimmers. There’s a form behind her, barely visible, that walks with the strut of a scoundrel; it is at the sight of this figure wrapping an arm around Leia’s shoulders that Luke feels the first of his tears track down his cheeks.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Han Solo says, his smile as crooked as ever. “I’ll take good care of her until you show up.”

The laugh that escapes from Luke’s chest feels more like a gasp, but Han’s smile widens, anyway. Leia waves as the two of them take their first steps away, then blows a kiss into the wind. Luke catches it and presses his warmed hand against his cheek.

When he finds Rey, her hands are stilled curled into Ahch-To’s dirt. He sits down next to her without a word and watches the waves crash onto the shore. In his head, his nephew screams; across the galaxy, restless rebels grow still.

The last princess of Alderaan is welcomed by the Force. She drifts, watchful, while her last breath floats through the galaxy on a wind that never dies.

**Author's Note:**

> XOXO Carrie Fisher. Even amongst a litany of stars, you will continue to shine.


End file.
